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Sunday, November 13, 2011

There's a lot of great stuff written on autism, but it can be tricky to tip-toe past the loopy (but hugely entertaining) books with shouty titles like "I Kicked Autism's Arse And I'm Not At All In Denial" or "My Child Caught Autism From A Toilet Seat".

An excellent trick to save time is to avoid autism books with animals on the cover.
Also, if the title includes the words "cure", "vaccines" or "alien abduction" they're generally only good for use as a door-stopper (if they're thick enough).

Simon Baron-Cohen was one of my favourite writers on the subject of autism.
I could always rely on him as a voice of reason in the crazy swirl of autism literature.
But now he's gone as mad as the rest of them.

He recently wrote a book called the "Science of Evil" in which he explains that committing evil acts arises from a lack of empathy (can ya see where this is going?) and that human cruelty has a scientific basis.
He compares autism to psychosis.
I can't claim to have read the book, because he lost me when he tries to redeem autistic people by applying some strange positive/negative empathy scale to their acts of cruelty...including an example where an autistic person punches a baby to stop him crying. But that's alright because he had positive zero empathy. Or something.
Try telling that to the baby's mother.

But the bottom line is that most people will read the blurb at the back of the book and conclude that people with autism are psychopaths.
If anyone other than Baron-Cohen had written it, I'd have a good laugh about it.

But I'll be too busy buying some fava beans and a nice chianti with my little psycho to worry about it.
Have the lambs stopped screaming yet???

Sunday, November 6, 2011

I feel a little God-like this morning, owing to the fact that I have created a being in my own image.
Let's ignore that this creature is a master-manipulator and genius executioner of cunning plans.
Allow me to bask in my divinity for a few moments.

That was nice.

Now for an uncomfortable bump back to reality.

Finian is using my autistic stealth bombs against me.
Phrases about worms turning and the servant becoming the master are bitch-slapping me around the head with gleeful wickedness.
It's no way to treat a small god.

I was in the process of getting my Imp of the Devil a healthy boring breakfast when he used my "first ....., and then...." shtick on ME.
Except his was "first hot chocolate, then chocolate toast" (you seeing a common theme here??).
What the...???

Frankenstein has nothing on me.
He just cobbled together a lumbering jigsaw of mismatched body parts (I suspect the same blueprint has been used to create many of us) who suffered from poor dental hygiene and parental separation anxiety.
Finian has no such problems.
I think my work here is done.